Hard Drive Warranties

[James R. DeLoach]

Maxtor and Western Digital has changed their rules on when
the warranty starts on hard drives that they manufacture. The
warranty starts the day the drive is manufactured, not the day,
we, the customer buys it. Now if you have a receipt, they will
in most cases honor the warranty from the day you purchased
the drive. If you go to Maxtor's web site, you can enter the
serial number of your hard drive and see when the warranty
expires. On Western Digital's web site you can see that info
after you've registered it. The date of manufacture is on the
decal on the hard drive.

Everyone needs to read the article on page 28 in the
August, 2004 issue of Computer Shopper, that just came
out today, if you haven't already heard about this.


Regards,

James

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[Arno Wagner]

Maxtor and Western Digital has changed their rules on when
the warranty starts on hard drives that they manufacture. The
warranty starts the day the drive is manufactured, not the day,
we, the customer buys it. Now if you have a receipt, they will
in most cases honor the warranty from the day you purchased
the drive. If you go to Maxtor's web site, you can enter the
serial number of your hard drive and see when the warranty
expires. On Western Digital's web site you can see that info
after you've registered it. The date of manufacture is on the
decal on the hard drive.

I have no issue with the Maxtor policy. It gave me some additional
months warranty so far. However it is a good idea to check the
remaining warranty time when getting a new drive. If lower than
it should be, keep the receipt. I also note the warranty expiry
time directly on the drive, which is handy if you have a lot of
them.

Arno